Kathryn Davis to read from work Jan. 26

Kathryn Davis, recently appointed senior fiction writer in the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, will open the program’s spring reading series at 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26, in Hurst Lounge.

The event is free and open to the public. Hurst Lounge is located in Room 201, Duncker Hall, on the university’s Hilltop Campus. For more information, call (314) 935-7130.

Davis is the author of five novels: Labrador (1988), The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf (1993), Hell: A Novel (1998), The Walking Tour (1999) and Versailles (2002). Her sixth novel, The Thin Place, is forthcoming later this month.

“Kathryn Davis’s fiction defies our attempts to summarize, for it is at once frightening and funny, romantic and gimlet-eyed, heartbroken and philosophical,” said Melanie Fallon, the Writing Program’s third year fiction fellow. “In a field where beautiful prose and powerful narrative are often and oddly discussed as though they were competitors, Kathryn Davis proves that it is possible to have both: a story that seizes you and won’t let go, and the kind of sentence that invites you to sit for a while and bask in its strength and grace and wisdom.”

Davis’ numerous awards include a Kafka Prize for fiction by an American woman, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She previously taught creative writing and literature at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY.